1001 Frames

Auditioning for the dream role of Scheherazade in One Thousand and One Nights becomes a nightmare in this form-blurring thriller. One by one, a series of mostly younger women sit down in front of the camera on an empty sound stage in Iran. They’re in the process of trying out for the role of Scheherazade, the wise wife in the Middle Eastern fairytale who finally gets the better of the cruel sultan who has murdered so many before her. But as each gives it their all – some more comfortable than others with the audition’s gendered power dynamics – the increasingly insidious demands of the unseen director begin to feel, all-too-disturbingly, akin to those of the fable’s abusive tyrant. Expanding on her 2015 short Scheherazade and shot in Iran without a permit, Mehrnoush Alia’s nerve-shredding feature debut feels like a #MeToo documentary spiced with a hint of psychological horror. Interrogating the authoritarian hierarchy of the film set and how it can be used to reinforce social power structures, this contemporary take on an ancient story asks what it might take to break out of the frame.